Broad but shallow

This game feels like a weird modded RimWorld: take RimWorld, move the view to the side, remove the enemies and add Oxygen (and gas) management.

The problem?

Unlike RimWorld it’s far broader but far shallower. A quick way to explain it, is that there’s literally dozens of crafting stations in ONI… except all of them have like 5 recipes (while in RimWorld a crafting station does a lot of stuff).

The game is so close to being great, so much so that when I started playing I loved it… then after playing more hours I started to realize that it’s at best… mediocre.

Consequences? What Consequences?

I’ve read other reviews complaining about the difficulty being punishing… I literally don’t know what people have problems with.

I had ONE problem in my game early: Carbon Dioxide was almost everywhere which caused (minor) problems - mainly the fact that my duplicants (this game version of the RimWorld “colonist”) had to constantly move to places with oxygen (which slowed things down) - This was caused by me building my base horizontally instead of vertically, and because I purposefully didn’t build oxygen generator early on because I wanted to understand why I even needed them since there was oxygen in the room (I realized it was produced by rocks that would disappear after a while) - This problem was solved by just digging a room down (Carbon Dioxide goes down) and place a thing that absorbs Carbon Dioxide and output polluted water,

That’s one of the main problem with the game: none of the “bad choice” you do has consequences: literally, my duplicants:

  • have been breathing polluted oxygen for hours (I literally pump polluted oxygen from a “source” to the middle of my base - something the game doesn’t seem to understand because it’s been complaining that I’ve not been producing enough Oxygen compared to what I use)
  • have been eating the most basic food (literally sludge) made with dirt and water filed with germs
  • are constantly going to places they can’t breathe in

None of this caused any meaningful consequences: none of my duplicants died, none of my duplicants had any problems… other than potentially (?) some things being done slower, and some of their status bars being red.

That’s the main difference to RimWorld: In RimWorld, things have consequences, if you “abuse” your colonist they get mental breakdown, if you don’t prepare “enough” you get decimated when enemies raid you.

I’m technically still in the early game, but that’s the problem: I have no reason to push toward anything other than… the rule of cool… because everything I have is enough to survive. I have literally nothing to look forward to.

Conclusion

This game isn’t bad per-se, but its shallowness makes it almost boring. It feels like RimWorld… for pacifists..?

Rating and Recommendation

5/10 - Not Recommended (Recommended if you played a lot of RimWorld already)